The versions of Illustrator and PS that I have are getting pretty old and I was wondering if anyone has strong opinions, good or bad, about the state of the open source alternatives.

I looked into switching maybe six years ago. At the time I think Gimp didn't have layer styles or something that was a deal breaker for me and InkScape wasn't even close.

Gimp and Inkscape have come a long way in the past few years. I would venture to say that Gimp is pretty close to Photoshop in capabilities, but the workflow is pretty different. Inkscape isn't as close, but with the new 0.48 version coming out soon you'll find it very capable though.

Quote: Original post by zer0wolf
but the workflow is pretty different.

In what way?

Different layout, different hotkeys, and different icons? The features are very comparable, but it certainly has a learning curve when coming from Photoshop, I would say.

If you're a few Photoshop versions back, the more recent ones also have workflow differences - there will be a learning curve no matter what you switch to.

If you're concerned about the GUI in GIMP when transitioning from Photoshop you could try GIMPshop, which is a version of GIMP designed to share look and feel of photoshop.

You could also try Paint.NET; not quite as capable as Photoshop or GIMP, but a very capable and freely available editor which may well meet your needs.

It was a few years ago, but GIMPshop was really unstable the last time I tried it. If anyone really uses it for work, is it safe to use now? Is there still random crashes and freezes? I'll spare you of my rants on Adobe, I'll just say that, at this point, I'm trying to rid my computer of Adobe software as much as possible, but I can't find any credible replacement for Photoshop besides GIMP, whose GUI repels me too much for me to feel comfortable. However, if you don't mind GIMP, the features that are missing compared to Photoshop are mostly icing and the core features you need to make art are all there.

You could try Paint.NET (Windows-only) if your needs aren't too high. For basic photo editing, it has everything you need, you'll never find yourself missing Photoshop.

Illustrator is unfortunately better then Inkscape for now. I also find it harder to use.

Inkscape is an SVG editor, so it will likely never contain Illustrator features that move away from that. That said IMO Inkscape is a lot easier to use for the basics (I've never got the hang of Illustrator's node tools).